What You Thought You Knew
by nomdeplume1313
Summary: Sam realizes that what he thought he knew about his brother was only a very small portion of the picture. Part of the Home in Motion universe, but it's not necessary to read the story for this one-shot.


_A/N: For those who haven't read Home in Motion, that plays very little part in this one-shot. Johnny is Dean and Cas's adopted son, who was born with only his right hand. Destiel is established by this point._

**What You Thought You Knew**

_"No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance." Atwood H. Townsend_

Sam watched Dean as he studied the Enochian chant, his mouth moving as he worked over each syllable. He didn't understand why his brother seemed to be memorizing it when they were going to experiment with it first on Cas. It wasn't for emergency use just yet, and they would have the journal on hand when they tried. Sam thought it made more sense to memorize it later, once they were absolutely certain it would work.

They had decided that they needed a better means of sending an angel away, mostly for Johnny's sake. The boy's speech was improving daily, but it would be years before he developed the fine motor skills to draw the banishing sigil correctly. Not to mention that if he were, God forbid, ever injured in his right arm or hand, it might be impossible for him to use his left arm to create the symbols correctly. Though it would still be some time before the boy could manage to work his tongue around the exorcism correctly-for demon or angel-it would give the hunters and Castiel peace of mind.

"You'll be able to keep the journal with you when we try this out, you know. It seems silly to memorize the exorcism if it doesn't work."

"I know, but some of these words are new. I need to memorize the syllables." Dean hadn't looked up from the page, but after a few moments' silence, he seemed to realize that Sam was watching him. "What?"

"What do you mean 'memorize the syllables?'" Sam asked.

For a moment, Dean looked skittish and hesitant to answer. Finally, he spoke slowly, either out of reluctance or because he found something about Sam's question incredibly stupid. "Like, remembering them like they're pictures, then work them out phonetically."

Sam paused and looked at his computer screen where his version of the exorcism had been typed out, along with translations and possible variations. Then, he looked back up at his brother and asked, in all seriousness, "Are you dyslexic?"

"Yeah," Dean said, and that apprehension surfaced again. Sam couldn't be sure if his brother was surprised he didn't already know or if he thought this would somehow lower him in his little brother's eyes. Sadly, it was probably both and almost certainly more of the latter. It stung that Dean seemed to think this knowledge would make Sam think any less of him. "I was diagnosed a couple of times. Twice when I was ten, then once at eleven, thirteen, fourteen. But you don't really get consistent lessons on the road, you know? And I couldn't exactly explain I'd been diagnosed before, either, without getting into the aliases, the moving, the motels. I had to wait for the teachers to notice, and most of the time, I didn't want them to."

Sam could understand that. He remembered some of the schools used to have these special reading sections that would meet in the special ed classrooms, and the teachers all sort of treated the kids with learning disabilities like they were slow in every area, rather than just one. Sam could only imagine what a disaster it would have been the first time someone made a crack at Dean about riding the short bus or using any kind of degrading names. He wondered if that wasn't the reason for some of Dean's fights in school.

"Is that why Bobby got so insistent with Dad that we should move in here with him?"

Dean shrugged. "Probably didn't hurt." He still looked on edge, like he was trying to justify himself, which he really didn't need to do. "I sometimes pick up books at the library, looking for new tricks so you're not always kicking my ass at research. So far, I'm better to stick with the picture-phonetic thing. It works for me." He smiled wryly. "I asked Cas to fix it once, too, but it was one of those things, he said, that was 'meant to be' or some other crap like that. Good thing he's great in sack, or I might have kicked him in the balls."

Sam felt guilty now for the number of times he'd written off his brother's struggles with academics as Dean putting forth no effort to improve himself. He'd always thought Dean was smarter than he let on, and it always frustrated Sam that his brother never seemed to own it. It was humbling to realize that Dean had managed so much, become an amazing hunter, despite the fact that it probably took him two or three times as long as Sam to read something and get it to stick. Yet, Dean had put in that extra work, along with looking for ways to improve his reading, to get himself to a speed resembling Sam's.

More than once, Sam had been short with Dean, snapped at him when he mangled Latin that was right in front of him. He remembered gloating about his grades to Dean and hoping that some kind of competitive nature might come out in his older brother so that he'd actually do something about his own grades. In the end, Dean had always just praised Sam for being smarter than him, even phrasing it that way. How many times, Sam wondered, had he found Dean with a book over his face, sprawled out on the bed, not because he was being lazy but because he'd been trying to get through it before exhaustion took over?

"So, you've been learning ancient languages, reading Vonnegut, helping me with my homework as a kid, decyphering the crazy stuff we have to read, when half the time it was jumbled?"

"More than half," Dean mumbled.

"That's really..." Sam paused, and he hated that his brother actually looked like he was waiting for him to ridicule him for this. "Really fucking impressive."

Dean smirked at the swear, but it turned into a proud grin that he attempted to hide behind the journal.


End file.
